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by mandalora



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Ficlet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-03
Updated: 2020-07-03
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25047280
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandalora/pseuds/mandalora
Summary: Ahsoka should not have come alone.
Comments: 4
Kudos: 34





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**Author's Note:**

> Season seven was a fever dream

“We could have destroyed Sidious!”

“Only for you to take his place!”

Useless. Absolutely useless. He looks into those eyes of innocent, righteous blue and sees in them the death of everything that could have been.

Everything they could have had.

He mourns it, then. Like he mourned his brother, like he mourned his mother, like he mourned everyone and everything he cared for that he was forced to kill or watch burning.

And it never stops. And it will never stop. This is merely yet another of those deaths.

There’s a scorching under his sternum. A promise of a fire that has been building for years, decades, slow and awful and _excruciating_ in its swelling, and he feels it finally sparking to life. It’s useless, though. It’s a futile rage that blusters purely on reflex, a desperate attempt at control, and his body moves on its own when he presses his onslaught and drives forward and pushes—

Sloppy. Reckless. She spots an opening and rams her elbow into his cheekbone, sending him reeling back— Then spins and lands a kick, and he has to bring his attention back to reality to catch his footing.

He has no control in this. He never had. He has been set on a path and all he can do is walk.

Fine, then. Walk it he will.

When she launches herself at him he hurls her away, and if the durasteel of his foot doesn’t at least crack her ribs then the slam against a rafter surely must.

Blinding light, beeping of the comlink.

_“Lord Maul, we must depart immediately.”_

She scrambles for purchase, manages to hold on. He hardly spares her a glance as he turns to leave, and it’s a mercy. She has a chance. She may yet save herself. 

When he’s reached the top and she’s slammed into him and they both tumble back down and find mutual balance, he sees with a pinprick of disappointment that she threw away that chance.

But perhaps she never had one. She never had a choice, just as he doesn’t—they can only follow this set course and he need only carry out his purpose.

And _his_ plan will be complete.

He knocks one saber out of her hand. The other. His blade cuts through durasteel as if through air and she wobbles, balances on the brink of oblivion as fear and courage both come together into a whirl in her eyes.

He jumps, lands on the other side, and the rafter sags further with a wailing creak. 

She holds her ground.

It isn’t long, now.

And yet he straightens, holds out his hand, and thoughts rage and war in his skull as if in protest of his body’s movements— _let it go. It is done. You cannot save this._

_You could never save anything._

“I give you,” he hears himself speaking and he can’t stop the words, “one last chance.” 

Breath fails him and he’s panting, with exhaustion or helplessness or vain, senseless, irrational desperation as if something may yet change.

Last chance to seize this moment. Last chance to prove him wrong.

“Join me… or die.”

She looks back with venom, with resentment, and he knows what she’ll say. She doesn’t even need to. He knows what comes next and he hates her, he pities her, he wants to be her.

Inescapably, she hisses, “Never.”

So be it. 

She slides deeper into a defensive stance, preparing for his advance. Readying to dodge. 

He allows himself this one final tinge of bleak amusement.

_Oh, no, my lady. I’m sorry to disappoint._

Her gasp is abrupt as he grabs hold of her through the air and yanks her to him by an invisible string. Her eyes, awash in the light from his gunship, are so, so blue, so wide with shock and childlike hurt of betrayal.

He let her throw away their chance. 

He won’t let another of his failures haunt him.

She yelps—more in surprise than pain—as the beam of laser runs her through. She tries to garble something, chokes out a weak breath, and her body spasms akin to a fish caught in a net, a bird with its wings clipped.

It’s a pity.

Other than that—once again, as always, he feels nothing.

_“Lord Maul. My lord, we need to go.”_

Rumble of several approaching gunships. Time is of the essence.

“On my way,” he speaks into his comm.

Lightsaber extinguished, the grip on the Force loosened, and the body has no more support to lean against. He only catches a glimpse of the gaping ember of a wound between her ribs as she sways with the weight of gravity and then falls, like a stone, off the rafter and down, down.

_“My lord. Please. No time.”_

“Coming. Standby.”

He climbs back up to the hole in the roof, gets out onto the surface, and at once the extraction team moves in on his position.


End file.
